A significant number of the population suffers from thyroid diseases, including Graves' disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism (including neonatal hypothyroidism), nongoitrous hypothyroidism, Euthyroid or hypothyroid autoimmune thyroiditis, primary myxedema and idiopathic myxedema. These diseases involve the action of autoantibodies (thyroid blocking immunoglobulin (TBI) and/or thyroid stimulating immunoglobulin (TSI)) that recognize and bind to receptors present on the thyroid gland, resulting in undesirable changes in the production of thyroid hormone.
While diagnostic techniques are available for some of these diseases, these techniques are nonetheless cumbersome, laborious, and lack sufficient sensitivity and/or specificity.
Thus, there remains a need for compositions and methods for detecting thyroid hormone blocking immunoglobulin (TBI) and/or thyroid stimulating immunoglobulin (TSI), that are sensitive and specific, and that may be used for the dual detection of both TBI and TSI.